Look again at this imagery of marriage in regards to our relation to Christ. When I wrote the original post on the topic, I said that marriage is a very vivid example of what we should and can experience in relationship with God, but that it is also a very poor shadow of how great this relationship can be. I went on to discuss the ways in which we should be able to experience emotions and a mind set surprisingly similar to marriage, but I never really talked about the great distance above and beyond which is available with Christ.

Envision the perfect marriage. This brings to mind a different definition to many people, some wouldn't even agree that there could be such a thing with all of the brokenness surrounding us. But I find that the more I pour myself into Christ, the more I gain vision for right relationships, even if I don't see them in reality before me.

My point is not really to define the perfect interaction of a couple, but to realize something else. We still have a broken relationship, a marriage to Christ with a fault running across its foundation. We still live as a broken, distrusting wife in our flesh. This is the reason that people like Paul look forward with such anticipation toward a world beyond this. Then the marriage will be perfected. But be humbled and strengthen, renewed in exaltation of your groom in realizing this.

The groom is always faithful, even in the many circumstances when His bride is not aware or paying attention. He is full of integrity in all His interactions. When He is slandered, He does not lash out at offenders or speak to others of His great misfortune. But His bride is often quick to react in His defense in a way in which He Himself would not react or find becoming. And while this bride extols Him in this way and praises Him to others, she often treats Him poorly, or disregards the things she would claim about Him when she is more contented. All of her attitudes are dependant on her mood or her emotions. Others may only hear or see nice things, but her husband is constantly faced with a very violently obvious division of contradicting emotions. While she reaps all the benefits of a selfless lover, He is left confused and emotionally weary by her actions toward Him.

This sounds like a rough marriage situation. It doesn't sound nearly as bad as many marriages today, but is both sad and beautiful. It is sad to see something broken, only kept beautiful and intact by the actions of one member.

But realize that this is all true of your relationship with Christ. Your the bride. Your so lucky to have His undying affections! We treat Him so poorly, it almost seems a negative when we do occasionally appreciate Him, because it shows just how much our circumstances decide our opinions of our Great Lover, and how much we ultimately worship and love ourselves instead.

But there is so much beauty in God's constant faithfulness in love to us. He is the Husband who never leave in any circumstance, and never even falters in demeanor, focus, or passion. God be praised that, while we still find ways to destroy our relationship with Him, He is constantly glorifying Himself through His faithfulness to us! We are the luckiest people to have such faithfulness exacted out into our lives daily! Let this affect us greatly.

It is this love relationship on which I recently wrote which God continues to expand in my view.

As of late, God has built a new awareness into my life. He has layered on understand and new perceptions in rapid succession. He has been revealing to me what I should be looking for in a wife.

Woah.

Wait a second, what does this have to do with anything I have been writing about? Let me disclaimer this post by saying that I am not seeking a relationship right now, that's not where my mind is, in fact, as you read hopefully you will understand how much I'm trying to ignore the idea of a relationship until God throws something in my face.

I have been earnestly seeking God. This is only by His hand, for I have no skill in this as a very broken man. But He is always faithful, and I have been reaping blessings through the Scripture, Godly friends, and general revelation. As strange as it may sound, the more I have been seeking Christ, the more I have been coming to understand marriage. God started to show me simply things, but in His flawless light. Things that don't sound extraordinary, like that I should never been looking at any feature in a possible mate other than the extent of their personal devotion to Christ and the similarity of their heart to His.

I haven't been studying marriage, or looking through Scripture specifically related to it. But daily I receive a new perspective on how much more my relationship with Christ is than a marriage could ever be. Marriage done properly is a very vivid shadow of what our relationship with Christ is, but also a very poor shadow of the extreme nature of this relationship. The emotions we have about other people in romantic relationships are the ones we should be strangely close to having about Christ. Every poor blind human scouring the earth for someone to fall in and out of love with is truly a being seeking back the lost King of His heart. Every perfect romantic fairy tale or movie plot is really a shadow of a much greater relationship meant to be had with God.

A perfect marriage, which we don't really see often, includes most of the attitudes and feelings we should have toward Christ. But the most exquisite marriage is no match for the greatness of what God has dreamed for us.

So to truly be Christ's bride, I should treat him as I would if I where someones wife.

This has been a strange but empowering perspective for me recently. I don't mean acting feminine in any way, I am actually continually striving toward manlier manhood. But I do mean looking at life as if every decision affects both myself and the man who is leading me. It means learning to submit in every single situation, so that my opinion doesn't determine the outcome. This new perspective has me making disciplined decisions to devote things to Christ, because He has to be my priority for this relationship to work. I'm sure there are so many other analogies that don't come to my head immediately, all of which are equally valid and revealing.

So I try earnestly to live my whole day, every day, thinking about the relationship I have committed myself to in salvation. The perspective that is so transforming in creating a healthy marriage is exactly what is needed in creating a healthy life with Christ! And this relationship must always take priority over any human one. A marriage is only designated by God, not something we should be looking to for personal gratification.

So even though I have been learning alot about marriage, I am at the same time becoming more cautious about stumbling upon relationships. My blinders are up, and I am hoping and praying that only a miracle could bring them down.

But it does stand true, if I ever want to be a good husband, I have to learn to be a great wife.

At the Gathering this week, God spoke through a friend into my life. This is pretty much the norm.
He said, basically, that God is not desirous of what we are able to do for Him. While our talents, abilities, and areas of expertise are definitely valid to be useful, God is not looking for us to be figuring out all the great things we can do with those talents. He wants us to be faithful in being useful where we are. This was ice water in my spiritual face.
I have been trying to discern God's will for me among the torrent of various options and possibilities available as I settle back in at home. I have been seeking God's face in this, and looking for interesting or cool possibilities. But I don't think God necessarily wants me to look for the neat ministry I was thinking I might be equipped to pull off. He wants me available to do what he wants.
So I put the ideas I have been mulling over off to the side, and I looked for ways that I could be selflessly serving the needs that God was trying to fill. I found the opportunity before I totally realized I was looking. So God gave me the opportunity to serve Him in a more lowly, less skill/talent oriented fashion, and it was a great blessing. To do a more lowly job is a great way to truly experience God's will.
It is amazing however, how easily we can do something humbling with a prideful spirit. How does it work out that we can serve God in a hole somewhere and then brag about how humbling it was? So perhaps we find ourselves in one of three positions.
In the first position, we are unwilling to do what God would have us or blind to what the is. We do nothing of true benefit in this category.
In the second, we see and follow through with the service of God, and it is good for us and molds us, but we see it at face value, a work and stretch that grew us.
But the third, this is the greatest, to live in simple love relationship with God in a manner that yearns to be only working in the hole on the other side of the world. A love relationship so real that serving God needs no fruit whatsoever, because its just for Him, and His satisfaction is the only fruit we would see anyway.
A friend told me a story recently about a man going to heaven and coming back. I think we have a common feeling sometimes about this type of Lazurus story. We wonder, how could this person who has seen the presence of God stand to come back to earth once more. But when this man was asked about this, his response was that to be so overwhelmed with adoration for God only loans itself to be unwavering in doing whatever He could possibly ask of us.
I once had one of the most worshipful experiences of my life standing at the end of a steel press in a factory, praise God for his glory! I don't see this as something to brag about, but something I desire. I want to be contented to work in a deep hole without the knowledge of any other being aside from the Lord. I want that love with Him to break all fleshly desires for anything else!

Since returning to Kentucky, the highlight has been attending a house church locally called The Gathering. I knew about this group coming back, but I really wasn't prepared for the great depths to which the Lord is moving with this community.

I have friends who are much better at friendship than I am, and they had been faithful while I was gone to keep in pretty regular contact with me. You know who you are. So coming back into the area, I knew that my group of friends in Bellevue were getting pretty involved with discipleship and had partnered with a group they where pretty familiar with in Ft. Thomas, even though I didn't really know any of these people.

God is intense! He faithfully moves upon us when we seek His face. It is so refreshing to have such authentic community!

This week I felt kind of like I had receive a laundry list from God. But it was great, exactly what I needed and was ready for. I felt like every point made by those present was something I had to respond to with an "oh yeah, I should really start living that out" mentality.

One of the largest things that God keeps rehashing these past few days is that my love relationship with Him should be my only true priority. All of the so called "blessings" we have in life are ultimately most often simply distractions. I was discussing this over coffee with a friend last night. Neither of us are really coffee drinkers, definitely not Starbucks junkies. But there we where, for the purpose of growing together in Christ. Is it weird that we both drank tea at Starbucks? I was afraid they might kick us out... But as we where talking about how perhaps we should rethink our definition of blessings, since most of the things we call blessings are just big distractions, God brought Philippians 1:22 to my mind. Now I think many Christians automatically recognize this "To live is Christ, to die is gain" passage, but I had just read it that morning, and had specifically realized that I still have never been sure of what "to live is Christ" could possibly mean. It sounds like bad grammar or deep philosophy, maybe both. But I had never really come to grips with that term, even though I had thought about this issue before.

But here is the truth. The only satisfaction and sustainance in this life is Christ. To use a Tozer analogy, God gave man all things to bless him, then man sinned, taking God off of the throne of his heart and continuously trying to replace Him by utilizing these various blessings as throne substitutes. The things which bind us are perversions of those things given us by God. To live is Christ. Therefore, to live is to experiance a constant love relationship with God, to be constantly pushing aside the broken blessings the world is holding up in our faces. To live is Christ. All else falls ultimately into the category of distraction. The only thing I should want is Christ's intimacy and the ablity to serve Him in what He asks of me.

To live is Christ.

To live is Christ!